


The Body is a Blade that Sharpens by Cutting

by dieofthatroar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, I ship Yuri with happiness, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Yuri Plisetsky backstory, but it takes a while to get there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9183802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dieofthatroar/pseuds/dieofthatroar
Summary: Yuri counts time differently: in bruises, medals, and stars.A history of Yuri Plisetsky, in three acts.





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> A holiday gift for a friend, because I make promises I don't realize I'd have to keep.

Yuri is five years old and he’s never seen so many stars.

His grandfather takes him out of the sprawl of Moscow and into the countryside where there are farmhouses on the edges of forests and snow that hadn’t turned black from the grime of traffic. They arrive at a frozen lake just as the sun is setting. 

“I found these in the basement,” his grandfather says as he laces up the little white skates onto Yuri’s feet. They are tight and pinch his toes, but the shiny metal bottoms fascinate him. They glint yellow-gold in the light. “They were your mother’s, a long time ago. I think they’re perfect for you now.”

Yuri stands up. And immediately falls down. A puff of snow bursts around him and his grandfather laughs. 

“Yurochka,” he says, his voice still trailing on the edge of a grin. “With me.” 

Yuri takes his grandfather’s hand and they toddle, together, to the center of the lake. The trees fall away and the sky opens up. His grandfather’s hand is strong and Yuri is not afraid that he will fall again. When he looks up, his grandfather’s face is smiling down at him. The stars make a crown around his head. 

  
  


Yuri is eight years old and he skates circles around his competition. 

After the end of his program, he rushes to the edge of the rink where he finds his grandfather waiting. 

“Did you see that?” 

“Of course! You were amazing.” His grandfather hands him his guards and Yuri takes his hand as he wipes his skates and slips them on. 

“My coach says I’m really good,” Yuri says. 

“Yes, you are.” 

They are walking toward the locker rooms, passing by the gaggles of little girls in sequined skirts whispering in each others ears to pass the time, the proud parents at the boards pointing at their children across the ice, the boys in line to compete nervously watching the rink. Yuri turns left and his grandfather follows. 

“I mean,” Yuri tries again. “I mean that my coach thinks I need better training. If I want to get better. And I do. I do want to get better. He already gave me the name of this coach he knows, and I know that it will be hard, but…” Yuri looks up, sees the twitch in his grandfather’s mustache, and makes his face as serious as he can. “But I want to be good at this.” 

His grandfather doesn’t say anything. He helps get Yuri’s bag from the locker and carries it for him to the car. It is the strange sort of weather that is exactly the same temperature outside as in the rink. As if they’re not leaving at all. There’s no wind, but Yuri still shivers for a moment and clutches his jacket close before climbing into the passenger seat. They are both still. It takes two tries and a grumble for the ignition to start. His grandfather still says nothing.

Yuri watches the world go by his window, a little blurred in the dusty glass, but trees and snow and sky all the same. The rumble under his seat slowly lulls him to sleep, but before he nods off, his grandfather finally responds. “Who is this new coach?” 

  
  


Yuri is ten years old and he hides his gold medals in a black, ripped-up athletic bag tossed under his bed. 

After practice, he opens the door to the Moscow apartment where he’s lived his whole life. The second lock on the door is still broken, and has been since he can remember. It rattles when he enters, announcing his presence with a metal clang and jingle.

“Урод,” his father calls him from the kitchen. He sounds drunk. Yuri tries to sneak past the door and escape into his room but doesn’t make it. His father is an expanse of a man - a mass of muscle and curdled stench of alcohol that takes up the breadth of the small hallway. There is no room for Yuri to tiptoe around.  

“Please,” Yuri begs. “I’m tired.” 

“Tired from dancing around?” his father says. He leans in and Yuri looks away. “I hear what they say about you. Russian Fairy.  _ Pah _ . Is that something to be proud of?” 

Yuri ignores him. He stares hard at the ground, grasping his bag tightly in his fist. There’s nothing more than a change of clothes inside, he learned to leave his blades at the rink early on, but he still clutches it like it is a lifeline. A few moments later, his father moves to the side. Yuri exhales through his teeth and doesn’t jump when the door slams shut behind him. 

He throws his bag onto his bed, changes his shirt, and moves on to his parents’ bedroom. Inside, he finds his mother watching TV, wrapped in blankets partially fallen to the floor. 

“Have you eaten?” Yuri asks. His mother doesn’t look up from the screen. There’s some sort of american cop show on. Subtitles are running across the bottom of the screen, but his mother doesn’t seem to be reading them. She’s sitting very still, as if listening very hard, but Yuri knows that she can’t understand the words. Yuri can catch pieces at a time, half-learned phrases from his lessons, but he can’t keep up. He leans on the bed and takes his mother’s hand. 

“Did you eat dinner?” Yuri asks again. 

“Yes, yes, Yura,” she says, waving him away. The credits are rolling and another episode is starting. “Don’t worry.” 

Yuri waits on the edge of the bed for something else. Waits and waits but his mother won’t say anything more. She doesn’t look at him when he gets up.

“Close the door when you leave, will you?” his mother says. 

He does.

  
  


Yuri is twelve years old and he lives in St. Petersburg. 

It’s a stark apartment - an uninspired soviet-era concrete slab with a nosy landlady who sticks her nose into his room and asks him lots of questions when she brings up his dinners - but it’s only two blocks from the rink and it’s his. Only his. And sometimes, the landlady also bakes him pastries that he can bring with him to morning practices, so it really isn’t bad at all. 

Yakov had found it after he had won enough prize money to move. Has some sort of deal with pastry landlady, Yuri doesn’t know, but he isn’t going to ask too many questions. What matters is that he can be at the rink any time of day. He can skate and skate and never go home. There are dance instructors, personal trainers, physical therapists, choreographers, and of course, Yakov. All these people around him, teaching him. Talking to him. He would watch the senior skaters before his ice time, chin resting on the boards, and they would smile to him as they left. 

_ Hi Yura, how’s your step sequence going? _

_ Hey Yura, I saw that jump the other day. Good work.  _

_ Yura, could you grab my towel for me? Thanks. _

Yuri’s cheeks would burn red and he would bark back an answer, every time. Something along the lines of  _ none of your business, _ or  _ get your own damn towel. _ They would laugh, he would scowl, they kept up the routine.

“Spunky, this one,” his ballet instructor says one day. She had grabbed his waist while he wasn’t looking and he had started, almost elbowing her in the stomach. It had been an accident, but he played it off like he always did. 

“I don’t like being  _ poked _ ,” he snarled back at her. “And your hands are fucking cold.”

She shook her head. “So keep your spine straight,” she said. “Then I won’t have to  _ poke _ you.” 

The next time she touched him, he was ready. He didn’t flinch.

Every so often he would stay late at night - Yakov would let him if it’d been a light training day - and he would dim half the fluorescents and skate figures around the center of the rink. There would be only him, the sound of his blades, and the fake stars of the maintenance lights.

He jumps, he lands, and he is free.

  
  


Yuri is thirteen years old and he only needs to get in the top four at JGP Estonia to make it to the Junior Grand Prix Finals. 

He’s done everything he’s been told, some things he hasn’t, and everyone assumes he’ll be a top competitor. He retreats to the locker room before his warmup, stretching with his earbuds in. There’s no need to listen to his program, he’s done that enough, so he’s listening to some heavy metal that Mila had said matches his soul and drowns out everything else. Guitar riffs so there aren’t any silences. Drums so he can’t hear his heartbeat.

He looks up when a couple British skaters walk in. Rather, waltz in. Punks exist everywhere and Yuri is quick to see it in their step. They’re in their black skates and matching warm up jackets, hands on their hips and smirking at a shared joke.  _ Themselves _ , Yuri thinks. At sixteen or seventeen, they were just about the age when they’re physically men, but still think like boys. Boys that aren’t him. 

“Hey,” one says to the other. “You think that’s that kid they’re all talking about?” 

“The Russian one?”

“Prodigy or something.” 

Yuri is still on the floor, towel stretched out under him, head to his right knee. They’re speaking loud enough that Yuri can hear through his music, though he doesn’t acknowledge them. Instead, he just switches to his left. 

“Fairy,” the first says. Their skates click closer. When Yuri looks up, both of the boys towering over him. “That’s what you’re called right? Fairy?” 

“I don’t think he knows what we’re saying.” 

But he does. He shuts off his music and scowls back at them. Yuri’s English has improved, and he can understand every word. 

The boys laugh. “Wonder if fairy means the same thing in every language...”

“I don’t know,” Yuri bites. “Want to explain your joke to the little fairy?” 

“Prick,” the boy says. 

“Отъеби́сь!” Yuri shouts back. 

“What did you say?” The boy grabs Yuri’s arm hard, just under his shoulder, and something in him snaps. Yuri whips around and punches the boy hard across his nose. He hears a crack and suddenly there is blood. 

“Mother _ fucker _ !” 

And then Yuri is alone, the locker room door swinging shut with a bang. 

He doesn’t realize he is shaking until he goes to tie his skates. Bent over himself on the bench, he examines his right hand. Spreading his fingers apart doesn’t hurt too badly - he hasn’t broken anything - bringing them together again stings. There are scrapes across his knuckles that will turn green and blue soon enough, he knows. He remembers.

Yuri doesn’t stop shaking until he hits the ice. The little fairy still comes in first.

  
  


Yuri is thirteen years old and he gets himself his first cat. 

He names her Nika. His landlady finds out after two weeks of hiding the food and litter and reprimands him, but eventually allows him to break the rules. She starts bringing a dish of milk up with the pastries. 

  
  


Yuri is thirteen years old and he’s won his first junior world championship. 

He’s back at the old apartment in Moscow for the first time since he’d left for St. Petersburg. He waits, paces, for three hours outside in the little alleyway behind the corner store until he sees his father’s car pull out of the drive. It still takes him another ten minutes to gather the courage he needs to climb the steps. 

At the door, he fishes in the bottom of his bag for the key, and when it doesn’t fit, he knocks. Of course, as soon as he leaves, they fix the locks. 

His mother answers. She looks, somehow, both surprised and unfazed to find her son on her doorstep. 

“Yura,” she says, and invites him inside. 

They sit, side by side, at the kitchen table. There is a pot of on the stove with three strings from bags of tea sticking out of the top, a plate of crackers on the counter, and the smell of old fish lurking under it all. Yuri shows his mother his gold medal. 

“Is it real?” his mother asks. He isn’t sure if she means the gold, or the fact that he had won.

“I found you a place,” Yuri says instead. “It’s in the country, near grandfather’s. You’ll like it.” 

She gets up and walks to the stove, fussing with the knobs as if she was afraid she had left something cooking. The burner clicks on for a moment, then off, and his mother dumps the old, oversteeped tea into the sink. 

“But Ivan…” she says. 

“Father won’t know.” 

“He will miss me,” she says. It isn’t a question or an excuse. It just is. Like she placed it there on the table with the plate of crackers and the now-empty pot of tea.  _ Here you are, Yura. Everything you could have ever wanted.  _

Yuri clicks his tongue, sticks his hand into his bag, and pulls out another key. This one is new and gleams in the pale light of the kitchen lamp. This one has a lock that works - he had tried it out himself. He doesn’t say another word as he gets up, places the key on the table, and walks out the door. 

 

Yuri is fourteen years old and he watches Viktor. 

He has watched Viktor since he was twelve. No, that’s not right. He’s watched Viktor since he knew how to sneak TV time in the dark, sound on mute, when his parents were asleep. He’s watched him on his home ice since he was twelve, landing his quadruple salchows with such ease it made him warm, like sucking on the sweetest bit of candy to its core. 

But this watching is different. He watches the bend of his knees, the angle of his landing, the tightness of his arms in the air. Then, it’s his turn. Yuri gathers speed, ses up his stance, and flies. He lands. And then there is the applause from an audience of one. 

“Very good,” Viktor says.

“Thanks.” 

“No, really. Praise seems to have trouble getting through that stubborn head of yours. You’re good. Keep working hard.” 

Yuri looks up - must it  _ always _ be this direction? Up? - and Viktor seems earnest for once. 

“I will.” 

  
  


Yuri is fourteen years old and he’s won his second junior world championship.

When he gets back to Russia, he celebrates with his grandfather and piroshki. That night, they’re in the back of a smoky restaurant. The waiter huffs at him when his grandfather orders him some vodka. Yuri refuses. He knows he still looks about ten and he doesn’t much like the smell of alcohol anyway.

“Don’t you have any friends you’d rather spend your time with?” his grandfather asks. “You shouldn’t have to entertain this old grandpa.” 

Yuri’s surprised. He owes his grandfather more time than he could ever give, but that was never why he spent time with him. He could never think of their dinners as some sort of exchange. “I always like spending time with you,” he says. 

His grandfather chuckles, but it turns into a cough. He reaches for his water to cover it up.  “I must be very lucky,” he says and lights a cigarette for himself. The smoke dances and blends with the haze around them both. Flashing Yuri a quick smile, he opens then closes his mouth again. He looks into his cup. “Your mother. I promised her I would ask, but…” 

“How much?” Yuri says. 

“You don’t have to, Yurochka. You’ve done enough for her.” 

“How much?” 

“It’s just her car, but she already spent her last check on…”

“It doesn’t matter what it’s for,” Yuri digs back into his dinner. “I’ll pay.” 

“Yurochka…”

“And what about you?” Yuri asks.

“Oh, you know I don’t need anything more than to watch you win.” 

Yuri wants so much for that be true.

  
  


Yuri is fourteen years old and he’s grown two inches in the past six months.

“No quads,” Yakov says to him in the kiss and cry of another qualifying competition. “How many times do I have to tell you?” 

“But I can do them!” 

“For how long? You’re growing, Yura. You can’t take that strain on your body.” 

“But Viktor says…” 

“Viktor isn’t your coach,” Yakov says. “I am, and you have to listen to me.” 

Yuri nods and squirms and grumbles for the rest of the night, until he is finally free, medal in hand.

When Yuri finally gets home, he flops on his bed and savors the feeling of weight off of his legs. He takes off his shoes, then his socks, sticky with dried blood. The sores sting at his touch.  _ For how long,  _ echoes in his mind. He soaks his feet in the bath until they don’t hurt so much, then wraps them in bandages and lies back down on his bed.

After staring at his ceiling gets boring, Yuri limps over to the sink and washes his face, sighing at the warmth of the water. He brushes his teeth and stares into the mirror. His face looks back at him, leaner and sharper than he remembers it ever being. He scowls at it and the mirror-face scowls back, ugly. Nika walks in circles around his legs and meows. 

Yuri decides to grow out his hair so he looks less like his father.

  
  


Yuri is fourteen years old and he’s won the junior grand prix final. 

Mila swings him up in the air, twirls him, and rests him on her shoulder. Yuri complains. 

“Let me down, hag,” he says, but doesn’t put much effort in his escape. He quite likes seeing the world from this angle. 

“You’re going to break him,” Viktor says. 

“Shut up.” Yuri frees one of his arms and points an accusatory finger at Viktor. “I’ll break you. See if you can still win with a black eye.” 

Mila laughs and readjusts her grip. “In your dreams, kitten.” 

“ _ Let me down!” _

She dumps him on the floor and Yuri is left staring up at bright lights and criss-crossing metal beams. Viktor looks down at him, smiles, and gives him a hand up. 

“Come on little kitty-cat,” he says. “Time for you to go get your prize.” 

  
  


Yuri is fifteen years old and Viktor is gone.

“You didn’t stop him?” Yuri yells. It hurts, and he’s not sure why so much. The voice through his throat, yes. The air is so sharp it makes ribbons of his lungs. The nails digging into his palms and the area right behind his eyes. It was a massive headache, the kind that ebbed and flowed, looking for a release. 

“You know you can’t stop that man from doing whatever he wants,” Yakov replies. 

“What he wants?” Yuri says. He shuts his eyes, closing the gates on the pounding in his head. He won’t let it out. “I’ll show him what he wants.” 


	2. Act II

A few weeks later, Yuri is in Japan.

It was all a game to Viktor. But he’d played others games before. Other games by other’s rules. He can win, like he won all the others. 

_ Pig _ \- that other Yuuri. Wasn’t even on the ice when he arrived. Doing as he was told like a prissy good for nothing who never wanted for anything. Couldn’t take disappointment. Couldn’t even  _ hide _ it from the rest of the world, like he was proud of how pathetic he was. How much could he want it if it took someone else to drag the effort out of him? 

_ Cry baby - _ that other Yuuri. That house he grew up in, the warmth and the family and the goddamn fluffiness of it all. There were trees in the backyard and a steaming bath after every meal. How could he cry when there was this to come back to?

_ Fatso _ \- that other Yuuri. But there was Viktor, drooling over that katsudon. He’d get bored soon. He’d get full of the meal, get tired of the effort it took to look after somebody else, and leave. 

Yuri can take care of himself. But he’s Yurio now, and Viktor is there telling him he doesn’t know what love is, so he’ll be Yurio if that’s what it takes to win.

  
  


The day before Hot Springs on Ice, Katsudon boy lets himself into Yuri’s room. 

Yuuri isn’t as nervous as Yuri expected him to be. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, crosses his arms, and waits. For what? A greeting? Well-wishes and a song and dance? Yuri doesn’t know any melodies that suit the occasion. 

“What?” Yuri says and cocks his head. If he had claws, he would use them. Or a large  _ don’t bother me _ sign he could wear around his neck and a five foot radius enforced by something like fear.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says. There’s nothing on his face, like he hadn’t said anything at all. But there it is, in the air. An apology that Yuri hadn’t asked for. 

“No you’re not,” Yuri says. “You shouldn’t be. You’re being yanked around by Viktor as much as I am. Don’t lie and say you don’t want the prize.” 

Yuuri’s big, brown, teddy-bear eyes open a little wider. Good to know Yuri has some effect on him. “That isn’t what I’m apologizing for.” 

“Then for what?” Yuri says, sitting up.

“What do you think about when you skate your  _ Agape _ ?” Yuuri asks, looking at him in a way that makes Yuri feel small. “It’s beautiful...” 

“That’s none of your business.”

“... but it’s sad,” Yuuri finishes. 

Yuri doesn’t know what to say. He knows he’d underestimated this katsudon boy when he had arrived. He thought Yuuri was made of cotton and glass, like so many of his competitors before. Soft eyes and hard skulls. They all lean on each other and topple to the ground, while Yuri uses them as a ladder to the top. But this Yuuri is different. He looks at Yuri like he is small. Not below him, no, but young. Like the child that nobody had ever thought he was. 

After some time, Yuuri speaks again. “No matter what happens tomorrow, you know you can talk to me, alright? About anything.” 

“Get out,” Yuri says. He can’t look at him anymore. 

“I don’t…” 

“Get out.”

Before he leaves, Yuuri stops at the door. One hand on the wooden frame, the other again on the rim of his glasses. He holds himself there, as if supported by the whole of the house. “Thank you, by the way. For helping me with my salchow.” 

There is a sliding noise of wood against wood, a quiet thud, and Yuri is alone once again.

  
  


When Yuri arrives in St. Petersburg, his landlady gives him a lecture. 

“Back finally,” she says, and tuts. “Always coming and going and coming and going and always just leaving me a note. It was a long time this time! Nika missed you.” 

Yuri is sure that Nika was spoiled with treats and must actually look forward to the times he is away. But he doesn’t say so. He missed her too. 

“Where did you go this time?” his landlady asks. “Germany? Sweden?” 

“Japan,” he says. “For training.” 

“Training? Why would you go all the way there to train?” She studies him, frowning. Her eyes travel up his legs and across his torso, squinting her eyes at the hoodie that covers his hair and half his face.  _ Too thin,  _ she always says to him when she looks at him this way.  _ What do they do over in that ice rink? You’re so small _ . Yuri leans back from her gaze and remembers what it was like to hide bruises from classmates in grade school. It wasn’t like he was the only one, it was just common courtesy not to share. “Why not a holiday? You work too hard. You need a break.” 

“I’m fine,” he answers. “There were hot springs and beaches there, almost like a holiday anyway.” 

  
  


At Skate Canada, Yuri places second. 

JJ Style is everywhere. In the stands, in the locker room, out on the street, under his shoes, in the damn air he is breathing. JJ doesn’t know how to shut himself, or his fans, up. Yuri’s head is spinning, like he’s drunk. But Yuri doesn’t drink. No, it’s more like feeling ill. Like right before the fever hits and everything is just the slightest bit wrong. The food tastes too bland and the floor is a little bit too far away. 

Yuri hides during warm up and pukes into the trash of the men’s locker room. Nobody sees. He feels a little bit better. 

  
  


At the Rostelecom Cup, Yuri places second. 

It is the first time he seeks out another skater after a competition. There’s a bubbling in his chest, and though he doesn’t feel as dizzy as in Canada, there is still the distinct possibility of vomit in his future. And a strange feeling that Yuuri will make it better. 

And it’s strange, isn’t it, that he’s happy that Yuuri made it to the GPF? And it’s strange that he’s walking around Moscow again, looking for something that he might not find. He sees his old school, a park he used to escape to in the afternoons when he didn’t yet want to wander home, a bus on the line that went to the rink where he had learned to skate. He sees all this and he doesn’t feel too much, because now he’s looking for something. Not just trying to run away.

And isn’t it strange that when he sees katsudon boy standing alone at the end of the street, he’s happy? He’s found him and he’s proud of himself and Yuuri looks up at him from the ground (where Yuri put him, in his excitement), expectantly. Still, like Yuri is small. But like it’s okay to feel small sometimes.

When Yuuri rises, he puts his arms out in welcome. Yuri knows what he wants, he’s already run from it once today, but in the moment he feels like he could try, just for comfort. For Yuuri’s sake, and as a thank you for making him feel home in a place that was always the wrong kind of home. The arms are still out, waiting, and Yuri is there, staring. But wasn’t that the point of today? That he doesn’t have to try so hard? Yuri shakes his head, and katsudon boy seems to understand. 

Because this meeting is also an answer, in a way, to a question Yuuri asked months ago. Yuri hands him the piroshki and says, “my grandfather made them.” 

Yuuri’s face lights up, and for a moment, neither of them is lonely.

  
  


It has been two years since Yuri had last spoken to his mother directly, but there it is, her caller ID blinking on the screen of his phone.

It had only been messages passed through his grandfather or letters with old pictures attached to make him feel guilty for leaving her behind. Checks in envelopes handed off, or the occasional email left unread in his inbox. She still lives in that house by the lake he had bought with some of his first winnings. He still has never seen her inside. 

Yuri is in the rink kitchens, drinking hot soup with his feet up on the table and lazily watching whatever was already on the TV. Mila’s in the back, talking to another skater. Someone new. He doesn’t know her name yet. And there’s a janitor sweeping up in the hallway just outside. 

His phone rings, he looks at the screen, and his hands are shaking even before he answers. Yuri doesn’t want it to be here, where others can hear how his voice quivers when he says, “ Да ?” But there is nowhere else for him to go. 

“Yura,” his mother says. “It’s your grandfather...” 

That night, he doesn’t remember how he got to the putrid, dark bar he finds himself in, only that his apartment was too small for the tiger in his chest, caged and restless and pacing. He needs to move. Yuri wanders into this particular bar because it smells of smoke and sweat, and it’s the closest approximation to how he thinks he must feel. It’s a university stomping ground with 20 year old boys marking their territory with ill-balanced swagger and girls who couldn’t give a damn about the boys’ balls, but like the attention they receive nonetheless. There’s a dance floor in the corner, a throng of bodies in contact.

Soon, the tiger turns hungry, ravaged. There are people moving around him. Blurs. And Yuri thinks he’s supposed to be happy, he’s searching for happy, but through the haze, it comes out more like hysteria. He’s bumped and grabbed. Hands are around him, and he returns them with fists.  _ Who is this kid, _ he hears them say as he breathes deep the smoky air.  _ How old is he? _ There’s a dark chasm at the edge of his vision and he dances on the edge like he will fall into it if he isn’t careful. He toes the border, wondering what will happen when he jumps.

Yuri’s hot, like he’s burning up. These people around him don’t know how to dance but still think they’re at the top of the world. But he’s seen the top of the world, and it isn’t all that great. Even if you  _ can _ dance. 

He watches a guy pull his date from the bar, grabbing her by the waist and tearing into her with hand and teeth, and Yuri feels like he’s watching the past. There is drunken command in the way he eases past her skirt, each action so sure that nobody could ever say no. 

It’s stupid, but so is everyone around him. He wants to be stupid tonight. 

Yuri shoves his way to the couple, a terrible ringing bouncing around his head. He pushes his way through the crowd, teeth bared, because he knows he’s not eight years old anymore. He’s not helpless.

“Back off,” Yuri shouts over the music, cutting between hands and hips.

“The fuck?” the boy, lust-eyed and angry, snaps back.

A glass gets knocked of the bar and shatters on the floor at Yuri’s feet. He feels skin, the graze of a finger along his jaw, and he attacks it without thinking. Because on one side is the banging pulse of the dance floor and the other is the vast expanse of unknown, and he doesn’t know which one is scarier. Yuri feels the arm of a chair pressing into his back and he can smell the distinct metallic twang of blood when he lifts his aching hand to his face. The tiger inside him purrs. 

Someone grabs him, in earnest, and drags him away from the mess of people. It’s hard hands on his forearms - pinching, heavy - and Yuri screams and fights because he’s big enough now to make  _ others _ hurt. But the hands don’t let go until the night air hits their faces and they’re outside. 

“We need to get you home,” they say. “Where are your parents?” And Yuri feels small, in the worst way he can. So, he runs.

He finds his way home, stumbles up the stairs, and immediately sits on the floor of his apartment, dizzy. Center of gravity, right? Can’t fall far when you’re already close to the ground. 

Yuri doesn’t remember dialing, but suddenly his phone is by his head and Viktor’s voice is tinny in his ear. 

“Yurio?” Viktor’s mechanical sounding voice says from so, so far away. “You never call! I’m so glad that you called. Well, actually it is five in the morning here, but I was about to wake up anyway, and now I can watch the sunrise. It’s pretty when you catch it over the water. You remember that bridge…”

Yuri’s hand is glued to the phone and he can’t seem to move it away. To shut off the noise and stop listening. Stop whatever this is. But he can’t. Yuri curls his legs up into his chest, leans his back against the wall, and tries to breathe through his nose. 

There is someone else in the background now, in the mechanical far-away. He’s talking to Viktor, and Viktor is silent for a moment. It’s only a low grumbling static from this end, the other voice. But he can’t stop listening to it either. He hears Viktor say his name, and suddenly there is the other voice, strong and clear, in his ear. 

“Yurio?” It’s the other Yuuri. He sounds worried. “Yurio, are you alright?” 

Yuri doesn’t have the strength to answer, so he hums a low tone that he hopes Yuuri will take as a response. 

“Why did you call?” Yuuri asks, and is silent while he waits for an answer. He imagines the two of them, Viktor and Yuuri, in that warm, comfortable inn. The wooden walls and low tables and blankets on the floors. Beds and guests and families to bring you warm meals. He imagines Viktor standing behind Yuuri’s left shoulder, trying to listen to the phone too. Both of them waiting, together, in a countryside inn on the ocean. “Yurio, please talk to me.” 

“I…” Yuri starts, but can’t keep going. The headache is back, pounding and insistent. 

“Are you hurt?” Yuuri tries. “Are you safe? Where are you?” 

“Home,” Yuri manages. 

“Good, that’s good.” And in the following silence, Yuri knows what’s coming next. He knows, and he can’t stop it, but it’s what he asked for, wasn’t it? “Yurio, is it your grandfather?” 

The headache roars, and he feels like he’s spinning. The kind he can’t control. He wants to throw up, he feels it coming, but when he turns and aims his head at the floor, sobs come out instead. He knows Yuuri can hear them, he still hasn’t pulled the phone from his ear, but he can’t get himself to care. He cries, and it is ugly, and Nika is frightened of the sound, slinking into the bathroom to get away. 

Yuuri’s voice is in head again, soft and comforting, and sometimes in Japanese. Yuri isn’t paying attention to the words anyway, only the repetitiveness of the sounds. So, he’s listening to a voice, half a world away, because it is the only thing that’s preventing him from finding himself bloody and lost in a part of the city he’s never been to. But when he remembers that the soothing sound is that far away, he starts crying in earnest all over again. His ribs ache, like it does after being punched. It’ll be just like one of those nights where he slathers ointment over his injuries and lies awake in bed because the pain is too much to let him rest. 

But Yuuri knows this, somehow. So, they talk until it is morning in St. Petersburg and Yuri has to plug his phone into the socket behind him so it doesn’t die. Yuuri talking, mostly, but sometimes Viktor when Yuuri is getting food for them both and, once in awhile, Yuri will say something back. 

 

Two days later and Yuri is back on the ice. 

Yakov doesn’t ask where he has been - Moscow, the countryside, away - and Yuri doesn’t tell him - his bed, his shower, his computer watching Viktor and Yuuri’s faces as they talked to him. Now, back in his skates, all he wants to do is jump. Over and over until his legs can’t take it anymore. 

“Too soon to the competition,” Yakov scolds. “You’ll hurt yourself.” 

But the thing is, Yuri is afraid he’ll hurt himself if he doesn’t. 

  
  


In the following weeks, Yuri learns to bake.

He uses the fancy oven at Yakov’s, ignoring the stares both he and Lilia give him from the kitchen table. The burns on Yuri’s fingers and wrists that he wraps with bandages and covers with gloves are enough to remind him that he is alright. That he is still here. 

  
  


It’s a few days before the start of the Grand Prix Finals and Yuri gets distracted by all the stars. 

He’s supposed to be back at the hotel, getting a good night’s rest, but he wanted to get out for a walk. The air is crisp and clean and the lights in Barcelona are beautiful. There are still tables filled with people spilling out from restaurants, despite the late hour, and the smell of food spilling with them. Yuri walks down a long avenue, watching couples in the windows, families with small children falling asleep in their parent’s arms, groups of loud men laughing at jokes in a language he can’t understand. 

Further along, the lights fade and the roads turn more residential. Yuri follows the now winding paths up and up and up, and the city falls behind him and there is the ocean behind it. Now, it looks like ink. When the sun was still out, it was so very blue. 

A car door slams behind him and Yuri jumps, but the boys climbing out don’t notice him there. They’re around his age, punching each other’s arms and teasing. They have skateboards hanging loose in their hands and a couple of them throw them to the ground and jump on, gliding away. It’s quiet when they’re gone. 

Yuri finds an overlook and takes out his phone to take a picture of the water from the view. He runs the photo through a filter and his finger hovers the post button. But, in the end, he decides against it. Instead, he just grips the phone, the buzz of electricity warming his hand. A few minutes pass. He wakes his phone again, and looks through his contacts. Yakov would want him back soon, if he even knows he’s escaped the hotel. Or maybe he should just call a cab. Though, he isn’t sure what the number would be. Buses, were there buses? He doesn’t have internet. His hands go still over his phone once more. 

The moon seems brighter here, as if Barcelona is closer to the sky. Or maybe just this city hillside that’s playing tricks on his vision. Yuri always thought he could trust his feet more than his eyes, though Yakov always barked at him when he wasn’t watching properly. 

Yuri taps his screen, scrolls, dials and Yuuri is picking up on the other end. 

“Yurio?” he says. There it is again, the worry in his voice. “Are you…”

“I’m fine,” he says. “Just, lost I think. I went outside and I’m not sure how to get back.” 

“Oh, okay. Do you want me to come get you?” 

“That would… yes. Yes, please.” 

Soon, Yuuri and Viktor are there, jumping out of a taxi and striding over to him, despite his terrible descriptions of landmarks that led them to him. They check him over, as if they expected something worse. Black eye, drink on his breath, broken bones. They don’t find anything, and seem satisfied. “The cab is waiting,” Viktor says, gesturing back at the road. 

Yuri looks back up at the sky. The city’s bleeding lights haven’t erased all the stars. The brightest are peeking out strong against the radiance. Yuuri finds his side, a respectable distance away, and looks up with him. 

“Will it still be true?” Yuri asks in a very small voice, one only for him and Yuuri. “No matter what happens?”

“No matter what happens,” Yuuri says. “You’re not alone.”

Yuri nods, says goodbye to the stars, and lets Yuuri and Viktor lead him to the cab.

  
  


It’s the day before the Grand Prix Final and Otabek asks to be his friend. 

“Soldier’s eyes,” he says, and Yuri has never thought about it like that before. It implies that his fight was for others, when it was really only ever his. Selfish people aren’t good soldiers.

When Otabek holds out his hand, Yuri accepts, because he wants to believe it when Yuuri says he will never be alone. But he also knows that Yuuri won’t always be there. Yakov won’t always be there. And that Viktor went away when he needed him most and he had to build himself up again, piece by piece, until he was whole enough to offer a piece of him back to anybody else.

Yuri realizes he had never truly forgiven Viktor for breaking him like that.

When he finds the idiot the next morning, out by the water, he looks happy. Viktor is just like him, walking over others (it’s painful, for they walk with knives on their feet) looking for a happiness he didn’t think he would ever find. But oh, look, there it is. Handed to him on a plate spread with rice and tonkatsu sauce. That joy that he doesn’t deserve. Because Viktor is just like Yuri, except old enough to know better.

“That pig,” Yuri says, and he sees Viktor twitch. He insults Katsudon boy not because he dislikes him, but because he’s Viktor’s weakest point. His Achilles heel on a foot that doesn’t need one anymore. Because isn’t that pathetic? Viktor just watches the competition from the boards. 

Yuri wants Viktor to know what it feels like to be betrayed, to be so scared that he’ll fail because everybody has left and skating is the only thing he still has. “Incompetent,” Yuri says because Viktor is just like him and he knows what to say that will hurt the most. 

Viktor won’t apologize, because although he loves Yuuri, he is nothing like Yuuri. Instead, he is self-absorbed and petty, and he will prove his worth the only way he knows: physically.

Viktor smiles that  _ fuck you _ smile, the one for reporters and fans, and grabs him. Yuri takes it. They both need it. It’s been so long since violence against him had been physical and Yuri almost yearns for a time that was still that simple. When he knew when he would get attention and when he would be ignored. But Viktor doesn’t hit him and Yuri thinks,  _ No. No. No. This doesn’t feel like victory at all. _

  
  


Yuri Plisetski is fifteen and he watches Yuuri Katsuki.

And he doesn’t dislike him. He’s never disliked him.

And he can’t let him win, because he doesn’t want to let him go.


	3. Act III

Yuri books a flight back from the Grand Prix Finals, not to St. Petersburg, but to Moscow. When he arrives, he jumps on a train, and then a bus, and then walks through the woods to a house he had bought with the first of his savings. A house by a lake that looked beautiful in the snow. 

He knocks and calls, “Mother,” though it sounds foreign on his tongue.

She opens the door a crack first, green eyes staring out from the inside, then swings it open wide. “Yura!” she says, welcoming him in. “I’m so happy to see you.” 

Yuri steps in and it smells strange. Like food that’s gone slightly stale under the stronger stench of pine needles.

There are traces of man around the house. An electric razor in the bathroom, coffee in the cupboard that his mother never drank, a large jacket hanging at the back of the closet. He picks up a tie that was shoved between the pillows of the couch and holds it out.

“No,” his mother says quickly. “It’s not… it’s not him.” 

“Who?” 

“This man I met at the restaurant. He’s sweet, always asked for me when I was serving breakfast and…” she took the tie from Yuri’s hands and brought it into the bedroom. Yuri could hear the open and shut of the dresser. “I haven’t seen Ivan in years. I swear.” 

Yuri believes her. 

“I watched you on the television,” she says when she returns. “You did well, right? That’s what they said. Another championship.” A nervous giggle spills from her lips. “Another one! How many have there been?” 

“Just this one,” Yuri says. His mother looks at him, confused, but nods anyway. Nods and turns to a basket of yarn by her chair. There is a half-knitted scarf sticking out from the top.

“So, why are you in Moscow?” 

“To see you.” 

She giggles again. “You never want to see me.” 

“I needed to make sure you were doing alright.” 

“I’m fine, Yura. I’m fine. Wonderful, I…” She stops when Yuri hands her an envelope. “Wh-what?” 

“This is the last time,” he says. 

“I haven’t asked since…”

“I know.” Yuri bites the inside of his cheek. “I know. But I want it to be this way. I want to give this to you because I chose to. And then I want this to be done.” 

“This?” she says softly and folds the envelope between her fingers. “Us?” 

“Yes. It was never what either of us wanted.” 

His mother’s eyes go wide and Yuri has to look away. That face she has on doesn’t belong to her, he has never seen anything like it on her. It’s open and pitying and all wrong.

“Yura,” she coos and brings her hands to his face. “Oh, Yura, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Yuri touches his fingers to his cheeks, echoing where his mother traced her palms, and he feels that they are wet. 

  
  


Yuri is sixteen and he visits Hasetsu, Japan. 

“How does it feel?” Viktor says to him. They are both lying warm and slightly damp in the dining room of the onsen, riding the last of the hot high of the baths. 

“Feels like I’m melting,” Yuri says, spreading his arms back and legs wide. A starfish by the sea.

“No.” Viktor doesn’t meet his eyes. “I mean, how does it feel to be the champion?” 

There’s some commotion in the kitchens. Yuuri is cooking, clattering pots and glass bottles on the counter. “You know how it feels,” Yuri replies. 

“I remember how it felt for me,” Viktor says. “I have no idea what it feels like for you.” 

“姉さん...小麦粉はどこ?” Yuuri seems to be talking to his sister through the open door. She answers back, playful. They both laugh as they search through the kitchen for some ingredient they’ve misplaced. 

“It feels like I’m at the top of the world.”

“Yeah,” Viktor says, following Yuri’s gaze. “I was lonely too.” 

Yuri sits up vertebra by vertebra, languid and catlike, and blows his hair out of his face. Nowadays, it feels like the tiger in his chest is always pacing. “Are you saying I need to be?”

Viktor rubs the back of his neck. “Just because they still compare you to me doesn’t mean you need to do it the way I did.” 

“I beat you, old man. They don’t compare me to you anymore.” 

“Not the news I’ve been reading.” 

Yuri clicks his tongue. “You wish that’s what they said. You miss it.” 

“それに触れないで.” Yuuri’s voice is drifting toward them again along with the smell of freshly fried meat. “Viktor? Yurio? Dinner’s almost done.” 

Viktor smiles, sappy and slow. “I do miss it. But I don’t want it back.” 

“Embarrassing,” Yuri says, but his scowl is an act and he knows Viktor can see through it too. It doesn’t seem unfair anymore, the love that he feels here. It isn’t weak. But it also isn’t entirely for him.

  
  


Yuri is sixteen and he’s grown four inches in the past year. 

He jumps and he lands and he turns and starts again. He feels off balance. He’s felt off balance for a while now.

He spins and it isn’t good enough. The speed isn’t there, the flexibility isn’t there.

He turns and the breath coming heavy out of him is relief. The sweat is sweet like stolen chocolate.

He jumps, and in the moment he lands, he hears a sickening  _ pop _ . The ground isn’t where it is supposed to be, his legs aren’t even his anymore. 

He doesn’t want to go to the hospital, but the ambulance has arrived before he he can drag himself off the ice on his own. Someone must have seen him from the offices because the rink around him is empty. There’s no Mila to joke at his clumsiness, no Yakov to snarl his mistake. Only professional hands to pull him from the ground and into the screaming van. Nobody except the medics in the back to tell him he’ll be okay. 

Yuri wants so much for someone to hold his hand, because he’s hurt and ashamed and doesn’t want to be alone, but nobody that he would want to be there is close enough to come for him. They are all countries away.

Yakov arrives, eventually, at his bedside instead. 

“It isn’t so bad,” he says about the surgery he has scheduled in a couple weeks. “Viktor had two ACL tears during his career and still did fine. Be thankful it’s not worse.” 

Yuri stares at the white sheets and wraps them hard around his hands. Pulls them up and out from the bed so he can’t see the outline of the knee brace under the covers. “What would be worse?” 

Yakov looks at him with a pitying face that reminds Yuri of how young he is.

  
  


Right after the surgery, Yuri moves out of the apartment that Yakov had found him five years ago. 

He says goodbye to the landlady, tells her no, she can’t keep Nika, and then tells her yes, of course he’ll visit. There are roommates now, in this new place, and a bus ride to get to the rink. But both of those things are good things. The injury makes it so he can’t complete the season and the distance makes it so he doesn't have to remember that fact each time he leaves for a carton of milk. The stupid college kids are just loud enough to drown out the sound of his thoughts, reminding him every day how easy it is to forget the little kid who won that one title, some time ago. Another one of those endless lines of Russians.

Days of rehab and physical therapy pass him by. Ballet, on the days he is lucky. Pain on the days he is not. Nika on the bed by his side as he reaches for his pills.

“It’ll be alright,” Viktor says from the electronic faraway. This time, a competition in France where Yuuri is competing. “I’ve been there.” 

“It’s different,” Yuri says. “How it feels is different for me.” 

  
  


It has been two months since the surgery and Yuri is still here, whole, better. 

“Hey, we’re going to the Erarta museum,” his roommate, Zoya, says. She has a couple friends with her, other girls from the university. “Do you want to come with us?” 

Yuri stares at them, shrugging their coats on and stuffing their wallets into pockets, while he fingers the last page of the book he’s reading. “Why?”

“What do you mean,  _ why? _ ” 

“Why do you want me to go with you?” 

“Because it will be fun. And you looked bored as hell sitting alone on your bed all day and  _ don’t _ tell me that Nika is great company because I know her. She’s a little brat, that cat.” 

Yuri frowns. “Nika isn’t a brat.” 

“Oh, just come with us, Yura. You like art, right? You do that…” Zoya lifts her hands over her head and spins in a circle, some sort of dilapidated pirouette. “Pretty stuff, right? Art.” 

Yuri opens his mouth to say it isn’t that sort of art, but stops himself. What’s the difference? It’s refreshing, this ignorance. Instead, he says, “fine.” 

“You’re coming?” 

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

Yuri doesn’t know much about visual art. Performance art, yes. He knows intimately the ballets his choreography makes reference to and he’s studied the theater to hone the storytelling of his programs just right. But these static creatures that meet him in the museum -- paintings and sculptures -- were something outside his expertise. They frighten him in their stillness. A moment of the past that would go on forever, like a jump caught in mid-air from which he would never land.

Yuri wanders away from the others at the next room, drawn to the bold colors and shapes of the canvases on the other side of the hall. There, at the end, is a painting that makes his mind go blank for a moment. It’s so simple - an old man and a young child holding hands in the gathering cold of autumn. Their jackets are wrapped tight around them, their faces serious and staring straight ahead.

[Kid](https://www.erarta.com/en/museum/collection/works/detail/H080807002/), the little placard says, but a voice in Yuri’s head echoes, “ _ Yurochka _ .” He sits on the bench beside him to pull himself back together. His knee is stiff and aching and his mind is full of cotton.

After some time, Zoya finds him. “I’d wondered where you went.”

“I… ah… needed a rest,” Yuri says, but his eyes flicker back to the painting. 

“Hmm, that style always creeped me out a little,” Zoya says, a little grimace on her lips.

“It’s…” Yuri starts, but doesn’t know how to finish. Beautiful? Sad? Something like his  _ Agape _ , but he had no idea how to explain that to his new roommate. 

Zoya doesn’t look at the painting, but keeps her eyes on Yuri instead, and nods. As if the one word was enough. “You had enough rest? Because there’s this insane sculpture over there that I want to show you. It’s amazing! Pretty phallic, really, but I just can’t stop staring at it.” 

Yuri snorts. “Which one? They’re all phallic.” 

“Let me show you.” Zoya holds out her hand to help him stand. Yuri hesitates, but takes it after a beat. It’s because of his knee, he reminds himself. It’s because he looks like he needs it. 

But Zoya smiles when she lets go and tosses her head for Yuri to follow, and Yuri feels the steadiest he’s been on his feet in the past few months.

 

Yuri is seventeen and he adjusts.

The fire is still there, the tiger with its claws and bite. The drive to do better, be better. His body only needs to catch up. 

But there is time.

 

Yuri is eighteen and he wins his first world championship. 

He celebrates with Otabek, who wins bronze. They go to a nice cafe where Otabek orders him tea and pastries instead of alcohol because he knows that about Yuri. They talk - not about skating, but about everything else. And Yuri is happy that he has an  _ everything else _ to talk about. Yuri is happy. 

When they are leaving and Otabek is holding the door for him, he says, “got tired of looking up, didn’t you?” 

Yuri notices that they are the same height now. No, actually that Otabek is a couple centimeters shorter than him. He balks, for a moment, before stepping through the threshold. And then Otabek smiles in that way that is hardly a smile, the one that nobody else would notice, lets go of the door and trots in front of him. Satisfied about something he doesn’t say.

  
  


Yuri is eighteen and he decides to go to university in America. 

“But you could go to school right over there,” Mila says, pointing somewhere vaguely behind them, through the windows and out into the cold. 

“You’re the reigning world champion,” Yakov says, hands on his hips and disgust throwing lines across his face. “You can’t leave now.” 

“Who the hell is going to keep up with you over there?” Lilia says, but gives him as sincere of a pat on the back as she is capable of. “They don’t know shit in America.” 

“I’m going to miss the leopard print curtains,” Zoya says, sighing as she stares up at the living room windows.

Yuri shrugs. “You can keep them.”

Zoya is already up on a ladder, pulling them down from the rods with not-so-careful hands. “I’m really,” she says again with emphasis. “Going to miss these leopard print curtains.” She shoves them in Yuri’s hands with a throaty laugh.

The morning Yuri leaves, he drapes the curtains over the couch and sticks a note to them that reads,  _ I’ll miss them more _ .

 

Yuri is nineteen and university feels like learning to skate all over again - terrifying, but oh, so freeing.

He learns he is good at calculus though he hates it, bad at English literature though he loves it, and that he won’t get an A on philosophy seminars if he yells  _ bullshit _ every time that хуй across the table opens his mouth. 

Yuri finds this pond a ten minute drive from campus that is definitely not for public use, but freezes over smooth and strong in the winter, where he can skate under the stars. 

“So, this is where you go?” his coach says when he finally brings her, mid-february, before the spring melt hides his sanctuary under mud and green growth. She’s only a few years older than him. Someone who had never seen him skate as a teenager and thought  _ young _ , but rather watched him and thought  _ equal _ . He had thought the same about her. It was why he chose this school to go to. No matter what Yakov says, Yuri was in no way throwing away his career.

“It was never a secret,” he says.

She crosses her arms and gives him the  _ half-lies aren’t full truths, Yuri, how many times do we have to go over this _ look that works more than Yuri would like to admit. Instead of arguing, however, he ties his skates and hops onto the ice. Newly fallen snow - the kind that’s so dry it floats away on the wind from his momentum - dances around him.

“Aren’t you coming?” he calls back to the shore. 

The skating is still there and still his, but other things are new. As Viktor always says, he’ll be nothing if he can’t grow.

  
  


Yuri is nineteen, and twenty, and twenty-one, and twenty-two and he spends his summers in Hasetsu. 

Each time he steps off the plane, two idiots grab him and pull him into a hug that smells vaguely of cherry blossoms and vinegar. Yuri learns not to be surprised after the first time and he doesn’t push them away. He welcomes it, in fact, pulls them in closer, even after they start asking about his classes and his training. Yuri tunes them out (only for a moment, because their voices are the one thing he has all the time) closes his eyes and inhales deeply.

Outside, there is sun. Inside, there is ice. Everywhere in between, there is warmth. And for the first time, he feels like he has enough love to return to a family he has chosen.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm dieofthatroar on Tumblr! Come say hi!
> 
> Title from Headfirst by Ocean Vuong


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